Petya Krasteva

Team leader at European Institute of Chemistry and Biology (IECB)

Dr. Petya Krasteva was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she graduated with a Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Sofia University. She then moved to the US to embark on a PhD degree at Cornell University where she specialized in X-ray crystallography to study the structure and function of signalling proteins involved bacterial biofilm formation. Following her graduation, she ‘jumped the fence’ and worked as an editor for Nature Methods, New York, for about a year and right at the dawn of the cryo-EM revolution. She then moved to Paris and back to academia with a postdoc at the Institut Pasteur in Paris where she studied bacterial secretion and also started her practical training in cryo-EM. She started her own group about 4 years and 2 babies later and her team, now based at the European Institute of Chemistry and Biology, has been supported by an ERC Starting and an ERC Consolidator grants to study the mechanisms of bacterial exopolysaccharide secretion, cyclic dinucleotide signalling and biofilm formation.